Ann Cvetkovich
Public Feelings
South Atlantic Quarterly 106:3, Summer 2007
Begun in 2001, our investigation has coincided with and operated in
the shadow of September 11 and its ongoing consequences—war in Iraq, a
sentimental takeover of 9/11 to underwrite militarism, Bush’s reelection,
and the list goes on. Rather than analyzing the geopolitical underpinnings
of these developments, we’ve been more interested in their emotional
dynamics. What makes it possible for people to vote for Bush or to assent to
war, and how do these political decisions operate within the context of daily
lives that are pervaded by a combination of anxiety and numbness? How
can we, as intellectuals and activists, acknowledge our own political disap-
pointments and failures in a way that can be enabling? Where might hope
be possible? Those questions stem from our experience of what one of our
cells, Feel Tank Chicago, has called “political depression,” the sense that
customary forms of political response, including direct action and critical
analysis, are no longer working either to change the world or to make us
feel better. The concept of political depression is not, however, meant to be
wholly depressing; indeed, Feel Tank has operated with the camp humor
one might expect from a group of seasoned queer activists, organizing an
International Day of the Politically Depressed in which participants were
invited to show up in their bathrobes to indicate their fatigue with tradi-
tional forms of protest and distributing T-shirts and refrigerator magnets
carrying the slogan “Depressed? It Might Be Political!”1 The goal is to depa-
thologize negative affects so that they can be seen as a possible resource for
political action rather than as its antithesis. This is not, however, to suggest
that depression is thereby converted into a positive experience; it retains
its associations with inertia and despair, if not apathy and indifference, but
these affects become sites of publicity and community formation.
Posts
Reclaim the heights! Bury the G8! Bring Your Shovels!
ReplyDeleteThe Diggers 2.0
APPEAL TO THE GLOBAL MULTITUDES: Seize this chance to build sustainable autonomous community structures! Capital merely engineers destruction and myths of future prosperity. Its crisis should be met with the shock and awe of the full energies of the multitude.
Break your backs creating a post-industrious commons!
A call to the global multitude to descend upon Abruzzo for July 7-11, and help rebuild it in the image of the future!
We've negotiated, we've demanded, we've blockaded, we've gone global, we've tried being glocal. We've smashed -- now it's time to build the commons -- our future.
Ten years after Seattle what we build is what matters. Let's ignore the spectacle of the summit. Let them see how it's done. A sustainable form of life, where solidarity issues out of the rubble like bluebells in the spring. Build a self-renewing power.
No to the vampiric event-management of the next human-faced developer trained within the ‘ethics' of his glass-ceilinged Olympian CSR agenda oiling himself in the social surplus. No value(s) from above! It's time for underground networks to rise up and flourish! Root the sporadic, weed the negativity.
We are the movement we've been waiting for. We are their crisis and our future. Solar energy to power this place. Rather than protest let's demonstrate a working model. Let's build on the rubble of neo-liberalism. Get digging! The energy of resistance is renewable! The not-yet is coming before you anticipated.
BRING A SHOVEL AND DESCEND ON THE G8 READY TO BUILD!
With Love and rage from The Diggers 2.0... SWARM at radicaleyes.it
http://www.diggers.org/
ReplyDeletethe san francisco diggers archive
http://books.google.com/books?id=z0mgPvL2MSwC&dq=No+Caption+Needed:+Iconic+Photographs,+Public+Culture,+and+Liberal+Democracy&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=AT37SZX-EYHuMui8lc8E&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5
ReplyDeleteA gaunt woman stares into the bleakness of the Great Depression. An exuberant sailor plants a kiss on a nurse in the heart of Times Square. A naked Vietnamese girl runs in terror from a napalm attack. An unarmed man stops a tank in Tiananmen Square. These and a handful of other photographs have become icons of public culture: widely recognized, historically significant, emotionally resonant images that are used repeatedly to negotiate civic identity. But why are these images so powerful? How do they remain meaningful across generations? What do they expose—and what goes unsaid?
In No Caption Needed, Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites provide the definitive study of the iconic photograph as a dynamic form of public art. Their critical analyses of nine individual icons explore the photographs themselves and their subsequent circulation through an astonishing array of media, including stamps, posters, billboards, editorial cartoons, TV shows, Web pages, tattoos, and more. As these iconic images are reproduced and refashioned by governments, commercial advertisers, journalists, grassroots advocates, bloggers, and artists, their alterations throw key features of political experience into sharp relief. Iconic images are revealed as models of visual eloquence, signposts for collective memory, means of persuasion across the political spectrum, and a crucial resource for critical reflection.
Arguing against the conventional belief that visual images short-circuit rational deliberation and radical critique, Hariman and Lucaites make a bold case for the value of visual imagery in a liberal-democratic society. No Caption Needed is a compelling demonstration of photojournalism’s vital contribution to public life.
we are everywhere:
ReplyDeletehttp://books.google.com/books?id=kBGFmqSg7M4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=we+are+everywhere#PPP1,M1
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together.